Sumsub's Annual Report: Fraud Shifts to Complex Multi-Step Schemes in 2025, Agentic AI Scams Poised to Surge in 2026

With overall global identity fraud rate stabilizing, high-quality attacks increased by 180% over 2024-2025

LONDON, Nov. 25, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Sumsub, a global leader in verification and fraud prevention, today released its Identity Fraud Report 2025-2026, analyzing millions of verification checks and 4,000,000+ fraud attempts between 2024-2025*. The study blends global and regional dynamics from internal data with findings from Sumsub's Fraud Exposure Survey 2025, featuring responses from 300+ risk professionals and 1,200+ end users.

In 2024, the rise of fraud-as-a-service platforms and ready-made toolkits "democratized" identity crime, making it widely accessible to non-tech-savvy fraudsters. In 2025, that trend matured into the Sophistication Shift: fewer but more professionalized operations designed for higher-impact damage.

"The Sophistication Shift marks a turning point, as businesses now face challenges tied to their velocity: the speed at which they can detect threats and adapt," said Andrew Sever, Co-founder and CEO of Sumsub.

Key findings

• +180% YoY growth in 'sophisticated' fraud: the share of multi-step attacks rose from 10% (2024) to 28% (2025) of all identity fraud.
• In 2025, 40% of surveyed companies and 52% of end users reported being victims of fraud; 75% of respondents believed fraud to become increasingly AI-driven.
• Over 2024-2025, the overall identity fraud rate decreased from 2.6% to 2.2%, but still remained above the 2.0% level of 2023.
• A brand-new trend for fake documents: AI-assisted forgery rose from 0% to 2% in 2025, driven by tools such as ChatGPT, Grok, and Gemini.
• Sectors most affected by fraud in 2025: online media & dating (6.3%), financial services (2.7%), crypto (2.2%), professional services – consulting, legal, accounting, marketing, and freelance platforms (1.6%), video gaming (1.6%).
• Top first-party fraud schemes (the individual behind the verification is the fraud actor): synthetic identity (21%), chargeback abuse (16%), application fraud (14%), deepfakes (11%), money mules (11%).
• Top third-party fraud schemes (external attackers exploit or impersonate genuine users): identity theft (28%), account takeover (19%), card testing (17%), social engineering (16%), bot attacks (12%).
• APAC spotlight: 1 in 4 respondents targeted for money-mule recruitment; ~80% recognize the term but lack clarity on real legal and financial risks. Cambodia (17%) recorded the highest ratio of approved applicants linked to fraud networks in APAC.
• Regional fraud rates: dropped in Europe (-14.6%) and North America (-5.5%,), increased +9.3% in Africa, +16.4% in APAC and +19.8% in the Middle East.
• Highest fraud rates within regions: Iraq 9.7% (Middle East), Pakistan 5.9% (APAC), Tanzania 5.0% (Africa), Argentina 3.8% (LatAm), Latvia 3,7% (Europe) and US 1.4% (North America).

As Sophistication Shift shows, while fraud rates in Europe and North America may drop, their complexity and impact continue to grow.

AI: offense and defense, now with agents

A newer risk is the emergence of AI fraud agents, autonomous, self-learning systems capable of executing entire fraud operations with minimal human intervention. In some cases, a single agent can orchestrate a comprehensive attack chain, mixing fake-ID document generation, deepfake video submission, and human-like interaction at high speed. Protection mechanisms must evolve faster to block such attempts.

Fraud production is also becoming industrialized—mixing automation, cross-channel manipulation, and orchestration. With roughly one in 50 forged documents now AI-generated, visual checks are among the most exposed layers. As Big Tech innovations such as Google Veo 3.1 and OpenAI's Sora 2 push the limits of hyper-realistic content, even protective measures like watermarks are proving increasingly easy for professional scammers to bypass.

Attackers are shifting from content to context—targeting the telemetry layer of verification: SDKs, APIs, data pipelines, and device/environment signals—to mask origins and behavior.

"AI reshapes both offense and defense," said Pavel Goldman-Kalaydin, Head of AI/ML at Sumsub. "Attackers gain deepfakes, synthetic IDs, and autonomous fraud agents; defenders gain behavior modeling, millisecond anomaly detection, and self-learning systems. The next frontier is verifying AI agents themselves—confirming not just who you are, but who acts on your behalf."

2026-Ready Fraud Prevention Strategy

As Sumsub experts reveal, effective measures for the future would be manifested as follows:

• Compliance teams turning into consolidated risk intelligence units that blend compliance, fraud detection, reporting, and case management;
• Verification moving from single checks to continuous assessment—combining device telemetry, behavioral analytics, and contextual intelligence into one adaptive layer.
• AI tech providing the backbone for efficiency, integration, and transparency;
• As AI agents increasingly transact on behalf of users, verification systems will involve their secure and traceable verification–potentially, by other AI agents.

The new study offers a comprehensive view of what businesses, regulators, platforms, and service providers must prepare for as we move into 2026 and beyond. To explore Sumsub Identity Fraud Report 2025-2026 in full detail, please get your free copy at https://sumsub.com/fraud-report-2025/.

* Note on Sumsub's research methodology

Sumsub Identity Fraud Report 2025-2026 compares internal identity verification and user activity data from 2024 and 2025, with added 2023 data to observe trends. All insights included are for countries with significant user activity on Sumsub's platform. The data has been aggregated and anonymized, with 4,000,000+ fraud attempts analyzed. All graphs and infographics are based on the data of consenting customers.

Sumsub conducted a Fraud Exposure Survey in August 2025. The survey included 1,200+ end-users from Latin America, North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, and 300+ fraud and risk professionals from companies of diverse sectors, including banking, crypto, payments, e-commerce, trading, and iGaming.

About Sumsub

Sumsub is a leading full-cycle verification platform that enables fraud-free, scalable compliance. Recognized as a Leader by Gartner, Liminal, and KuppingerCole, Sumsub combines seamless integration with advanced fraud prevention to deliver industry-leading performance.

SOURCE Sumsub